Guild Wars 2

Currently, when entering Legendary Centaur Stance, the splash art that should display (like when Jalis or Mallyx is shown above the character when entering their respective stances) instead displays a very lovely purple cube with the words: “FILE INDIRECTION; If you see this, it is a bug and should be reported.”

So.

Tried to attach a user screenshot to an in-game bug report, but couldn’t verify that I’d actually accomplished it, so here’s a screen I took manually.

Find ways to make the most out of your clones and phantasms. Reducing the recharge on your related skills will help you pump them out faster, meaning you can Shatter them more often to create more Confusion, Daze, and damage, while milking the added effects of each skill. Sword/focus (or dual swords) and staff is good for this, although it requires you to constantly move in and out of the fray, but once you get used to the rhythm of jump-in/jump-out and shattering it should feel better.

For major zerg events I’ve taken to using staff and greatsword so I can stay at range and monitor the whole field. Greatsword loses the striking power of the main-hand sword, which is frustrating, but it’s a lot easier to send clones scattering in multiple different directions with this setup and still know what the deuce you’re doing. Plus, the Berserker will strike your target and any other baddie in his line of motion, which can create a load of damage right by itself.

As for utilities, although I haven’t unlocked them all yet, I’m favoring the ones that give me AoE capabilities, mostly because I can combine their effects with the benefit of allies shooting or leaping through them, which inadvertently creates more random crap while I take care of other things.

Well, I mean, what does it really do? It’s not a good spike skill, just gives a moderate amount of damage to a target and a certain number of nearby foes. It strips one boon (which for its recharge is to my mind low anyway), but in PvE what baddies are generally booned anyway; and in PvP, as has been mentioned, the aftercast makes it so much of a death trap that the advantage of the boon-strip is basically nullified.

It just feels to me like it takes up space on the bar so that the greatsword has five skills to use, and so the caster can feel cool because DUDE I STABBED MY SWORD IN THE GROUND AND IT CAME UP OVER THERE!!!

…which is actually cool. But not enough to mitigate.

Kelesti.2458:

Third You can’t actually hit anything with Mind Stab. No really, this is ridiculous. The hit radius is too small for the fact it roots you to try to skillshot it. It either needs a bigger radius, or to go back to auto-fire.

I’ve been running greatsword/staff in group PvE situations, but I rarely end up using Mind Stab at all. Not only do I agree with your point, but the aftercast on it is insane. Literally almost two seconds of being completely open and useless, just so you can complete an animation where you pull your sword out of the ground and toss it back to a vertical grip.

I’ve gotten used to leading with it, since I can pretty well feel how a kiting baddie will move and match it with the damage timing. But in PvP I don’t think that would work at all.

I believe taking it back to an auto-target skill would make much more sense. I like being able to thrust it out of walls and other non-horizontal surfaces at will, but the only reason I’d have to do that would be to hit turret-like targets, and an auto-target would accomplish that anyway. Not sure that increasing the damage area would be a good idea; it’s kind of weak for that large of a striking range. Might be justifiable if it Crippled instead of boon-stripped, though.

I was actually rather pleased that Fire seems to be less effective underwater than aboveground. It makes logical sense to me; the effort a mage would have to put into spells relying on combustion in the presence of a vast extinguishing agent to get the same result as in an oxygen-gas-rich environment would be staggeringly more, and so the spells would effectively dial down to ways to manipulate the heat of the water.

Which the underwater Fire spells do. And, by contrast, Water and Air attune weapon spells seemed to be amped up in effectiveness (dat cage).

I mained an ele in GW1 for years, and I was always dissatisfied that Fire was essentially the only attribute line that could be effective in HM and end-game situations (with some occasional Earth builds tossed in). So to see that sort of a effectivness disparity pleases me from a diversity standpoint.

I would try playing beyond lv10, myself. Opening up all your utilities and your elite slot and expanding your trait progression may start to help you see some synergies you’ve previously missed.

Although, if you honestly expected a light-armor profession to be just as durable as a heavy, I might wonder about you a tad. ^_^;;